Pasta: Spaghetti with Spicy Three Meat Sauce and Shrimp Fritta Side: Minestrone SoupIt didn't hit me until the card arrived in the mail. Did I really just spend a hundred bucks to eat unlimited pasta at Olive Garden for 7 weeks? After feeling equal parts joy and dread, I realized I had to make it worth my while. I had to experience the wonders of the Never Ending Pasta Pass and write about it, like James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams, except instead of going to heaven with 1920's baseball players, I’d be going to Olive Garden. There are many kinds of hero.

Full disclosure: I haven’t eaten at Olive Garden in over a decade. I’m no snob. I enjoy food, I enjoy eating. I look forward to DineLA each year. But I’m not some elitist foodie. The other night, I ate at a place in Eagle Rock literally called OK Chinese Food. The name was accurate. Still, I was not looking forward to eating 7 weeks of Olive Garden.

I do have fond memories of Olive Garden growing up. Okay, one: it's where I first got drunk. I was 17 and we went to Olive Garden to visit a friend who just started working there. He hated the job, and gave zero shits, so he let us order Never Ending Glasses of Wine and eat breadsticks all night. ABBONDANZA!

And now I was back at that same Olive Garden in Glendale. Nothing had changed. Inside, it was exactly the same as it was in high school. Outside, the gaudy Americana had been built, Mervyn's was gone, Borders was gone. But Olive Garden stayed the same. Same casino-floor carpeting, same perky employees secretly dying inside. It was 2001 all over again.

I decided to order take-out. Eating dinner alone at an Olive Garden on a Monday… too soon. Maybe next week. For my pasta, I went with spaghetti, a classic. No need to go fancy on the first night. But instead of just regular meat sauce, I went with “Spicy Three Meat Sauce.” What those three meats are, I’ll never know. And to top it off, some fried shrimp. As they say in Italy, this meal was “quite-a-salty.”

For my side, they offered me salad or soup. Since I had a salad for lunch, I went with Minestrone, another classic. And of course the famous Olive Garden breadsticks. When the server handed me my food, it looked like a Nordstrom bag filled with shoes.

I looked at the receipt. Sixteen dollars for a feast that could easily feed 3 people? I don’t understand their business model, but who am I to argue. They’re still here, Circuit City is not. I handed the server my Never Ending Pasta Pass. She smiled and said I was the 10th person to come in that day with a pass. There are only a thousand passes in the entire world and apparently 10 are in Glendale. Who are these people? Can we hang out? Get brunch? Carpool?

I took my Macy’s bag of food back to Atwater (after a quick stop at McDonalds for a milkshake. Don’t judge). I looked at my dinner and… was not looking forward to eating it. It looked plastic, like a fake model they’d put in an IKEA dining room set to simulate pasta night. I set it aside and took a bite out of one of the three breadsticks they gave me (Really? Three? Is there a breadstick weevil?). It tasted like a flip-flop dipped in salt. I remember enjoying these more. Perhaps they need to be eaten immediately, and not taken on a side trip to Glassell Park.

I tried the Minestrone. Not bad. Pretty good actually. Beans were overcooked, and I counted two pasta shells, but the flavor was good. And again, there was enough soup for a dinner party. I’d gladly eat the leftovers at work tomorrow.

And finally, the pasta itself. After mixing it, I initially thought there wasn’t enough sauce. I was wrong. I took one bite… and it was actually good. A bit salty, but it's comfort food. The sauce even had some kick. Not anything remotely “spicy” but definitely better than just regular ol’ meat sauce. The chunks of “three meat” were plentiful and hearty. I was actually enjoying it.

After eating about half of my pasta, I realized I wasn’t carbo loading for a 5K and called it a night. As I put the rest in the fridge, it dawned on me — I could eat these leftovers tomorrow... or I could simply go back to Olive Garden and get another shopping bag full of pasta. Netflix for food. What a concept. If only OK Chinese Food had thought of it first.